Environment

As a service to readers, Westword presents this primer in how to distinguish the enigmatic, embattled energy giant Anadarko from the enigmatic, ominous cult classic Donnie Darko.

At the fourth and final “sharing session” to discuss the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that occupies most of the site that was once home to the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, there was on sharing. So two weeks later, opponents shared something else: a motion to stop construction of the refuge.

As with most things Trump, Alan Prendergast’s Slaughter ’Em: The Trump Plan to Solve the West’s Wild Horse Problem, a story about the president’s plan to control the West’s wild horses population, drew plenty of comments from our readers. Some were sympathetic to the majestic beasts, others not so much. Says…

A lawyer for Denver residents challenging a  $300-million stormwater project says that city officials are being excessively secretive about the case, declining to provide more than 7400 pages of documents and maintaining that the internal processes that brought the project into being should be shielded from outside scrutiny.

The proposed 2018 BLM budget would cut $10 million from the wild horse program and lift restrictions on the sale of “excess” animals to slaughterhouses. It would also remove a ban on euthanasia of unadopted equines that’s been in force since 2010.

In the final days of the legislative session, state Democrats and Republicans blocked each others’ attempts to earn political kudos with oil pipeline safety legislation — though the two plans differed substantially in their aims. On Monday night, two days before the legislative session ended, House Republicans filibustered a bill…

David Sirota, a Denver-based journalist and nationally recognized columnist, took to crowdfunding to raise enough money to get e-mails between Republican lawmakers in Colorado and oil and gas donors and lobbyists. Sirota raised the $1,670 required by the state to mine the e-mail accounts of Republicans in the Colorado Senate…

Yesterday was Earth Day, and while many people renewed their commitment to recycling and keeping the environment as clean as possible, others were talking trash about Denver’s new bin system. Dumpsters are scheduled to be eliminated by the end of the year, according to Denver Recycles and Solid Waste Management, and some readers already miss them.

Every old T-shirt or toy you throw out sits in landfills forever. This spring, be wise about your waste.

Forget sci-fi movies: For a real surreal experience, look no further than Golden. Colorado’s first capital is now the capital of the green movement and home to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary in July. NREL, which started out as the Solar Energy Research Institute…

This month, an environmental group called Colorado Moms Know Best (no, seriously) and the Girl Scouts teamed up to school the State Legislature and lieutenant governor on climate change challenges facing the 21st century. For doing this, they got not only a little experience in talking with our state’s elected officials — but also earned a new Climate Change patch.

By the end of 2017, the City of Denver will have completely phased out dumpsters in favor of cart-based trash service. Charlotte Pitt, manager of Denver Recycles and Solid Waste Management, understands that that’s a controversial statement.

Clarke lives in the Altogether Recycling plant in unincorporated Adams County. His operators are on a fifteen-minute break; when they return, Clarke will eat. He has a strict diet of empty cartons: milk, juice, etc. Clarke is hungry. He also thinks and learns. Clarke could be the future of recycling.

Three Denver-based environmental groups are suing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services branch, challenging two plans approved by Colorado Parks and Wildlife that together would kill up to 120 mountain lions and bears to protect declining mule deer populations. The Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the Western…

On Wednesday, a state Senate committee killed a Democratic-sponsored bill that would have required a distance of at least 1,000 feet between oil and gas drilling sites and school property lines. Two weeks after passing the state House, which is controlled by Democrats, the bill lost in a 6-5 vote…

David Owen’s new book, Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River, handles its sprawling subject with deftness and quirkiness.

As Boulder County prepares to end its moratorium on fracking, its officials are wondering why a two-month-old lawsuit against the moratorium filed by the Colorado Attorney General is still in the works. The suit is the last in a line of legal challenges to Boulder County’s temporary ban on new…

Denver has cracked the top ten list for smoggiest cities in the United States, according to a report by the Frontier Group and the Environment America Research & Policy Center that was released today, April 11. The Denver-Aurora-Lakewood area came in at sixth place on the ominous list, with…

The Denver-based Center for Western Priorities has launched a national ad campaign aimed at preventing national monuments from being stripped of their protected status by the Trump administration. The threat is exemplified by the efforts of numerous Utah legislators, who are currently lobbying Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to wipe out Bear Ears National Monument — a prospect that recently led Boulder’s Outdoor Retailer Association to announce that its annual Outdoor Retailer shows will pull out of Salt Lake City and seek a new home, perhaps in Colorado.

Denver has significant ties to Standing Rock and the resistance movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Many people, including members of indigenous groups in Denver like the American Indian Movement of Colorado (AIM) and delegations from non-native groups like Black Lives Matter 5280, traveled the hundreds of miles from Colorado to the…

Forget warmer weather, longer days and leaves and flowers returning. For anyone who parks on the streets in Denver, the months from April through November are known for one thing: street sweeping, which resumes on Tuesday, April 4. Cities around the world use street sweeping to keep dirt and debris…

A Colorado Court of Appeals decision issued on Thursday, finding that state law requires oil and gas regulators to place greater priority on protection of public health and the environment in issuing drilling permits, may prove to be a shot in the arm for beleaguered anti-fracking groups.